Grammar Is Easy: Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives

In this post, I would like to talk about 3 important types of words in English: nouns, verbs, and adjectives! This is a very basic grammar point, but it is so important. I have seen many students get confused about nouns and verbs and even adjectives. So, I will teach you in the post the definition of each one and at the end of the post, I will give you some exercises, alright? I would love to see your answers in the comments. Let’s do this!

Nouns

A noun is a word that can be a thing, a person, an animal or a place. For example a doctor (a doctor is a person), a cat (a cat is an animal) a hospital (a hospital is a place) a table (table is a thing or object). Let’s see some phrases with nouns:

I have a cell phone (cell phone is a noun. It is a thing, an object)

I don’t like carrots (carrot is a type of vegetable. It is a thing)

I go to school (a school is a place)

In English, nouns can have both singular and plural forms. I will talk about the plural of nouns in a different post since there are many rules. Stay tuned, I will talk about it soon!

Adjectives

An adjective is a word that gives quality to the noun.  The adjective modifies or describes the noun. For example a beautiful garden (beautiful is the adjective/the quality and garden is the noun, which is a place) a black cat (black is the adjective/the quality  and cat  is the noun, in this case, an animal),  a tall man (tall is the adjective/the quality and man is the noun, in this case, man is a person)

One important thing you need to know about adjectives is that you use adjectives in a specific position. The adjective goes before the noun.  In some languages, the adjective, the quality has a different position, but not in English. In English, the adjective goes before.

Let’s see some phrases:

I want to buy a long dress (long is before dress)

This is a new restaurant (new is before restaurant)

Now, look at this example:

The teacher is happy

In this case, you have the word teacher (the noun) and then happy (the adjective). Many students get confused in this case because we learn that the adjective goes before the noun. This case is different because you are using the verb to be to connect the ideas, so because of this, because you are connecting the ideas, it is possible to do that.

This book IS new (I’m connecting the ideas with verb to be. I’m describing the quality of the book)

Verbs

A verb is a word that describes actions. It describes an experience, an activity for example run, eat, drink, sleep. Verbs are very important because if we don’t use verbs, it is difficult to make phrases, so we need them all the time! Verbs are used to describe activities in the present, past, future and because of that you sometimes change the way you write and speak these verbs.